Nicaragua’s ‘Political Prisoners’ Would Be Criminals by US Standards
“Nicaragua Frees Hundreds of Political Prisoners to the United States,” the New York Times reported. In an unexpected move on February 9, the Nicaraguan government deported to the United States 222 people who were in prison, and moved to strip them of their citizenship. The prisoners had been convicted of various crimes, including terrorism, conspiracy […]
Sanctions: A Wrecking Ball in a Global Economy
A review of the report Sanctions: A Wrecking Ball in a Global Economy, edited by Sara Flounders for the Sanctions Kill campaign and published by World View Forum. Sanctions imposed without United Nations endorsement are illegal. That is why they could be legally imposed on South Africa by a resolution of the UN General Assembly […]
Nicaraguan migrants at the U.S. border – are they being “pushed” or “pulled”?
Why are more Nicaraguans heading north to the United States looking for jobs? Until July 2020, numbers were tiny. But in the last 1½ years numbers have increased sharply. Suddenly this has become a story, and government detractors argue, with little evidence, that people are fleeing political repression. “They’d rather die than return to Nicaragua,” […]
Nicaragua’s inconvenient Covid victory
In Nicaragua, Latin America’s third poorest country, people who don’t work don’t eat. Three-quarters of jobs are in small businesses or the informal economy. So when its first Covid case was diagnosed on 18 March 2020, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega knew that shutting down the economy would be catastrophic.
For Corporate Media, Sandinistas’ Electoral Success Proves Their Repressiveness
The headline in the Washington Post ahead of Nicaragua’s local elections hinted at skepticism: “Nicaragua Ruling Party Seeks to Expand Hold in Local Votes” (11/6/22). The story itself, taken from an Associated Press report filed from Mexico City, was worse, framing the elections as a “farce” carried out “under the absolute control” of the governing […]
New US sanctions are designed to hit Nicaragua’s poorest citizens
The Biden administration has announced new sanctions which are intended to hit the poorest Nicaraguans – both in their pockets and in the public services on which they depend. This latest attack on a small Central American country is, as usual, dressed up as promoting democracy: the sanctions will “deny the Ortega-Murillo regime the resources […]
A Tale of Two Countries: Honduras & Nicaragua face the shock doctrine
Jenny Atlee, Jim Phillips and I presented a webinar on neighbouring countries, Honduras and Nicaragua, that have both suffered what Naomi Klein called the “shock doctrine”. Both rejected neoliberalism in elections last year, but both are under renewed pressure to conform to Washington’s expectations. My contribution compares the two countries’ approaches to the pandemic, and […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on